Worlds collide as scientists and the public engage in 50 events across Oxfordshire

A new Oxfordshire Science Festival launches an astonishing array of events with some of science's biggest names.

Professor Marcus du Sautoy1 will officially launch the 2009 Oxfordshire Science Festival with a maths show (along the lines of his BBC mind games series) at the "Science In Your World Fair" in Bonn Square on Saturday 28 February. This will mark the start of 16 days and over 50 science events for schools and the public right across the county.

This first Oxfordshire Science Festival has been born of a collaboration between eight of the most renowned science organisations in the UK: the MRC, Oxford Brookes, Oxford Inspires, Oxford Natural History Museum, Science Oxford, UK Atomic Energy Association Culham, University of Oxford and Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. The new, centrally coordinated festival offers as great a range of activities and events for all ages as many of the biggest science festivals in the country.

From Banbury to Burford and beyond, people will have the opportunity to stretch their minds at seminars and demonstrations, to get their hands busy making slime, looking down microscopes and getting up close and personal with wildlife. Most of the events are free.

A number of the events have been tried and tested such as Wow!How! at the Natural History Museum as well as new events such as 60 Minutes of Sex, a question time panel show at the Oxford Playhouse Chaired by Judith Hann (Tomorrow's World) and featuring Professors Frances Ashcroft and Paul Harvey, Bishop Lee Rayfield (Bishop of Swindon), Dr Petra Boynton (sexpert) and Dr Domenico Di Cleglie (gender specialist).

The Oxfordshire Science Festival aims to make science real and fun everyone, even for those who get think science is not for them. Full details of all events can be found at www.oxfordshiresciencefestival.co.uk